by John Lynch
‘Up until then I’d battered anything put in my way…I’d let the fists fly and not stop until the fella in front of me went down…And if he was stupid enough to get up Bang…Bang…Bang…Not that fighting solves anything…But like anything else there’s a science to it. For a while there when I was a kid I believed I was it…You know, Ali, Foreman, all that gang…’
‘Right.’
‘Aye, this night anyroad I was in with a young buck and he had a tight guard…watertight…I think I got one good look at him all night and that was when I was flat out on the canvas looking back up at him. I’d gone in all guns blazing like some mad thing…Boom…Boom…Nothing, not a thing. He was as sealed as a tortoise shuffling here and shuffling there. The more he hid the more I looked for him and the more I slackened. Everything went to pot, my breathing…my stance…my power…I think it was round five about a minute from the bell when suddenly he hit me with this combination. His hands were so fast I’m still not sure if he threw them. All I know is one minute there I am banging away like a good ‘un and the next the ref’s standing over me giving that look…You know, are you still with us? To this day I’m effed if I know what that fella did. I tried to get up but the legs didn’t want to know, and the brain had gone to mush. It was then I knew there’s cleverer bastards out there than us. There’s bigger and there’s smarter. It’s like life, you just don’t see it coming…You never see it coming…Best you can do is keep the old snout clean and mind your own…How’s the old lady?’
‘She’s fine, Peter.’
‘Good. Hell of a woman. Hell of a gift she has…’
It was always the same with him. He would tell a long tale of daring-do from his youth, itching for the moment when he could enquire about my mother.
‘How’s the boss?’
‘Who?’
‘The old fella.’
‘Aye…Alright.’
‘Good…Good.’
‘Does God see everything, Peter?’
I remember he looked at me when I asked him this, for what seemed an eternity, smoke rising up his face like long grey fingers.
‘Every damned action and every damned thought,’ he said.
‘Right.’
‘What’s on your mind, son?’
‘Nothing.’
‘God is here, son, it’s only a matter of opening your eyes.’
‘I can’t see Him, Peter…I’ve opened my eyes…And I can’t see Him.’
‘See these, son?’
He held his fists up to me until they were inches from my face; I saw the knuckles, and the scars.
‘Yes.’
‘On their own they’re no good. Just weapons. I learned that the hard way. Left to my own devices I’ll misuse these feckers. I’ll start a war in a paper bag. I had to learn to lie Jesus across them, son. To put Him between me and them. That’s what I learned in that ring. No bugger can do this life on his own. He’ll get seven kinds of shit kicked out of him every time. After that fight I spent a long time just looking into my heart asking myself what I wanted. And everywhere I looked I saw the same thing. People throwing punches. Catholic at Protestant. Protestant at Catholic. Mother at daughter. Father at son…You know?’
‘I think so…’
‘Jesus came to me, son.’
‘Yeah?’
‘As surely as there’s breath in these old lungs of mine.’
‘When?’
‘At night. You know when the fear sits across a man’s heart. I was in the bed and I had a compulsion. An urge to get up and drop to my knees and pray. Unknown for someone like me. Always said no, you can keep religion, it’s messed the whole show up in this country of ours. But…it was as if a voice was working my thoughts. Had no choice, son. So up I leap…And onto the knees…And for some reason I didn’t join my hands. No, something told me to make fists with them. So I hold them out. And the voice says…Christ says…the living Christ says…Those scars are mine…Those fists are mine and they are to do my work. It was powerful, son. I haven’t struck a man in anger since.’
I remember how he closed his eyes as he lost himself to the memory of it and I stood awkwardly waiting for him to come back to me. He loved my mother, I knew that, my father knew that too and he would often tell me that the moment would come when Petey would have to raise his fists once more because he had him marked. My mother would never have done anything to hurt my father, but I know now that a woman doesn’t have to sleep with a man to make him her own. They met in secret, attended prayer meetings together, and my mother would always fudge the issue if my father asked her if she had seen Petey. They behaved as if they were lovers even though they weren’t. I felt sorry for them; I knew that in a different world, beneath different skies, it would have been different.
The Lacewing
‘Aren’t they magnificent?’ she said.
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Truly God’s own children like us, Gabriel…Just like us. Praise them, Gabriel…Praise them, son…Just like they praise us with their presence.’
‘I do, Mother.’
‘Say it with me, Gabriel…I praise you, Lord, and your golden children…I praise you.’
I remember how hot it had been in the place where they were kept, how the heat stuck my hair to my neck and brought me out in a prickly sweat. I grabbed her hand. I wanted her to stop, to tell her I was feeling uncomfortable, that I felt sick.
‘Say it with me, son…Let’s hold Jesus to our hearts in the presence of these His finest creations.’
‘Mum…I…’
A couple on the other side of the butterfly sanctuary had stopped briefly and stared as she grappled with me, trying to get me to kneel. I knew that they were thinking about saying something, I could see it in their eyes. I looked at my mother on her knees in front of me, her hair wild and unkempt.
‘Please,’ I remember saying quietly. ‘Please.’
‘Don’t turn away from the holy heart of Jesus…Don’t betray Him as so many have done.’
I looked back to the couple. The woman now had a child at her side; it was a girl of my age, and roughly my height. She was looking at me; there was pity in her eyes.
Eventually I knelt, my mother’s hand on mine as tight as a vice’s grip. I conceded as I did so many times with her, I laid my heart at her door, and told her I no longer had need of it.
‘I praise you, Lord…I praise you, Jesus…’ I remember saying the words, forcing them from my lips.
‘Good boy. Good boy…’
I remember looking at the butterflies as they moved from plant to plant. Some were the colour of a lion’s back, tawny and speckled with gold. Others were the brightest, deepest green I had ever seen, with garish yellow dots. Some were as big as a man’s palm and they moved slowly, their wings bearing them unsteadily from one large leaf to the next. They looked as if they had been hypnotised, fooled into accepting the glass cage that they were in. They reminded me of my home, a hothouse seething with heat and fervour. I felt sorry for them, they seemed tamed, and captivity had made them stupid and lethargic.
On our way out we stopped in the gift shop. My mother bought me a butterfly kite. It was a Malaysian Lacewing and its wings were a clash of reds and yellows, they looked as if they had been drenched in the hot fires of the sun and there were fine white lace markings on their edges.
All the way home I turned its large wings in my hands, marvelling at its colours. It cast a spell on me that day and all the embarrassment of the praying and the kneeling were forgotten as I held it in my trembling hands. I read the leaflet that came with it, my young mind devouring every word. I read how the butterfly could be seen in Indonesia and Malaysia, I remember turning the words silently on my tongue, tasting the hot continents they spoke of. I read about their fragile lives, and how the cost of the glorious garments they wore was two short weeks of life. My mother smiled over at me as I fumbled with the packaging.
‘We’ll fly it together,’ she said.
‘Okay. God i
s good, Mother,’ I continued.
‘Yes, son, God is good…Never forget that.’
I remember looking across at her and wondering at how quickly my heart could change, only moments before I had hated her and now I looked at her with love, pure and as varied as the wings of the large butterfly I was holding.
Standing in the Mouth of Love
My brother-in-law loved my sister. That was clear. He was her minder, her strong arm. She often told me that she didn’t know where she would be without him, that he was the still point in her heart. Ciara didn’t lack confidence, she had a bloody-mindedness that I recognised in myself, but Seamus gave her the quiet surety that I know she had been looking for all her life. He wasn’t a tall man, but had a presence that belied his height. He didn’t say much but when he did people tended to listen. They had met at a local dance when she was a young woman of nineteen or twenty. At first she had dismissed him as just another local, a hard man without a cause. He had asked her to dance with him and she refused and kept denying him for the next month, but he persevered, telling me later that the first time he had seen her he knew that she would be his wife. I remember being jealous when he told me this, I wasn’t sure why, but now I know. It was because somehow I believed that she was mine.
I envied him his strength. I wanted it for myself. He could see that in me, always looking at me as if I had a part missing and I suppose he was right. In the early days they both included my wife and me in what they were doing. We went on short trips together, shopped together. But I could always feel him watching me in quieter moments when the conversation lulled or when the others were preoccupied with other things. For a long time I resisted looking him directly in the eye. When I did summon the courage to meet his eyes I saw that he had a hold on me, that he knew something, it was apparent in the slight smirk that lay across his gaze.
It reminded me of the way my father used to look at me, that same penetrating stare that said, I have your number, I have you marked. I knew that there would be trouble between Seamus and me, but then again trouble was something that I was accustomed to.
He was bright though he was at pains not to show it, he had more success that way, he could surprise people, but he didn’t fool me. I knew his game. He worked with brass, fitting out bars and clubs in the area. He had a small foundry just outside the town and worked there five or six days a week. The business was his; he had started it with a friend and then bought him out when they fell out over money. It did reasonably well, but he said that he would rather be his own boss than work for some idiot and earn twice the money. He could do what he wanted, think what he wanted, you can’t fucking buy that, he would say to me. When he’d had a bit to drink, he said that working with brass was just like life, that there was a mould for everything, we could be anything, we could go anywhere but you couldn’t buck the mould, the shape that your heart had to fill. That’s how he had wooed my sister, I remember thinking, with talk of shapes and hearts and the moulds that house our souls.
He was legendary for his obstinacy. He had received a visit from some hard men shortly after he had taken over sole ownership of his business. The ceasefire hadn’t been long in place, and the violence that had gripped the province for so long had mutated into a different kind of threat. Self-appointed vigilantes sprang up like weeds across a wasteland. Gangs of youths roamed the dark, armed with baseball bats and chains, telling anyone who would listen that they had been appointed by the powers that be to keep the peace. As always there was a price, usually a weekly payment made in used readies into one of their grubby little paws. Seamus said that one day he had been pouring molten brass all morning, as he had a rush order to get out, so he wasn’t as aware as he should have been, he was distracted and hadn’t noticed them creep into his workspace until they were almost upon him. They were young, no more than nineteen or twenty and there were about six or seven of them, and they were wearing scarves across the bottom halves of their faces, you know, like the fucking Lone Ranger, he said. He looked up and there they were, like starving dogs with that same desperation in their eyes. He knew it was important to stay calm, and that probably the leader would not be the one who spoke first, but the one who was the quietest, they’re always the most dangerous. So one of the little runts begins yapping about the price of keeping the peace and that they were attached to such and such unit of such and such brigade of the fight for Ireland’s freedom and all that bollocks. There was a price to pay for this new dawn, he was told, a weekly stipend, to be collected by them. Seamus said he didn’t say anything; he just listened and nodded, scanning the eyes of the others to try and find the one he knew he would have to bring down. He said he knew him as soon as he saw him: he was standing at the back of the pack and he was slightly taller than the rest and he quietly nodded as his colleague delivered the speech about freedom and money.
‘Fuck’s sake, boys, I have fuck all money here. I’m behind on my orders. I’m owed money…’
‘When can you get it?’
This time it was the tall one at the back who spoke, and Seamus knew he had been right.
‘I can have it for you tomorrow evening.’
‘What time?’
‘About six.’
‘We’ll be back at six tomorrow evening,’ the tall one said.
Then he made a motion with his head, indicating that the rest of them should leave. As they did the tall one moved towards Seamus and said, ‘Don’t fuck us around.’
‘Wouldn’t do that, son. Wouldn’t do that.’
‘Good.’
That night Seamus made two phone calls. The first one was to a friend of his who was connected. He checked that these kids were who they said they were. Never heard of them, his friend said. Right you are, Seamus replied. The second call was to a mate of his who was a bouncer at a local dance hall. He had a face that even his own mother wouldn’t kiss, Seamus said. He told him what had happened and that he needed his help the next evening. His mate was called Bulldog mainly because he looked like one and he had the neck to go with it. Do you need any more bodies? he asked Seamus. No, just yourself, Bulldog, just yourself. I need you there at five.
There was a small hall at the front of Seamus’s foundry with two doors, one opening out onto the yard outside and the other opening into the workspace. Above in the ceiling there was a small roof space cover, the kind you give a slight push to and slide on and off. That’s where he put Bulldog, crouching up there in the dark, his large body scrunched over, his fists poised. Both doors had strong brass pull-across bolts on them and when the bandits arrived Seamus was sure not to glance upwards as they moved past him.
He watched as they filed into the work area, the tall one as usual at the back, a baseball bat dangling from one of his arms. As Seamus joined them the tall one looked at him and said: ‘So?’
‘Aye.’
‘Good.’
Seamus reached into his pocket and counted out the notes into the young man’s palm. The others gathered around them as he did this like orphans in a soup kitchen at feeding time.
‘Right. Knew you had sense,’ the young one said as he pocketed the cash.
‘Who wants any more trouble. We’re all sick of it,’ Seamus said.
‘That’s why we are here,’ the youth said.
Seamus said it was laughable the way he said it, as if he was in some daft American movie. He said he wanted to rip his face off, but he knew he had to play the stupid older man, make use of his smallness by standing close to him so that the kid would feel empowered by his greater height.
‘Next week?’
‘Right you are. Next week, son…’
‘Good man. Let’s go.’
Seamus watched as they began to file out, the leader waiting until the end before starting to leave. He stayed on his shoulder and moved with him towards the front door. As the others cleared the threshold Seamus waited until the tall one was about to leave and said: ‘You’re Owen McCarthy’s son, aren’t you?’
&nb
sp; He said it was comical the way the kid swivelled on his heels to meet his gaze, the look of surprise in his eyes was powerful. Before he knew it Seamus had bolted the front door, trapping him one way and at the same time Bulldog had dropped from the attic, like a stone of doom was how Seamus put it, and had locked the other door leading back into the workspace. He was trapped both ways. His mates were on the outside looking in, and he was inside about to have his skin rearranged.
‘Let’s talk fucking freedom now, son,’ Seamus said.
They took back the money and kicked him all over the fucking place, bouncing him off the walls like he was a child’s football. Seamus said you could have heard his screams in Fermanagh they were that loud. When they had finished, Bulldog picked up the youth’s baseball bat and smashed it to smithereens on the concrete floor. Then they hauled him to his feet and delivered him to his friends outside. They didn’t say much, they looked kind of sheepish as they took him from the two men.
‘One more thing,’ Seamus said as they walked away. ‘My fucking generation invented violence, son. Don’t ever forget that.’
The Room at the End of the World
I am being led. I no longer think about resisting them, the drugs they have given me have seen to that. My mind swims with the images that I know have broken me. I realise that my salvation now lies with them. I no longer have any choice in what happens to me. Somewhere I welcome it. I am weary. There are two of them and their hands are clutching my arms so that I don’t go anywhere. A man walks ahead of us; he is wearing a suit and now and then throws glances back our way. We reach a door at the end of the corridor.
It is reinforced with steel slats that run all down its sides and there is a codelock on it. Beyond is a small holding area that connects to another door. Both have tiny windows in them. The suited man punches a code on the buttons beneath the door handle, and after a moment I hear a click and the door snaps open. He pulls it wide and beckons to the two men holding me to place me inside. I step into the small space between the two doors and watch as they shut me in. One of them raises his hand and makes a gesture as if to say it’s okay, you’re okay. I nod back and see them retreat down the corridor. After a moment I walk to the other door and try it. I don’t expect it to be open, and it’s not. A voice inside me laughs and says, so this is it, this is what has become of you.
